During this year, WAS is developing different ways of general left-wing political activism in Iraq, our work is mainly based on political discussions with the community, within residential neighborhoods where there are the people who are most willing to receive change in their lives and who are most affected by the policies of the liberal-Islamic system. In these poor neighborhoods, workers, women and the unemployed live in a continuous daily class struggle with the religious, political, and socially dominant clan power.

We face daily challenges when engaging in this kind of progressive daily political activity that we want to transform into a progressive daily practice starting from the home and for individuals who consider themselves members of the WAS community.

These challenges arise during direct political discussions with our families, friends, neighbors, and people in the neighborhood in general. As we work in “Politics with Society”, we develop, present, and discuss left-wing, progressive ideas, through this daily practice we learn the way to positively change ourselves, our families, our neighbors, and then our entire neighborhood.

This atmosphere of exchange of ideas within the WAS community provides practical experience that helps us reach an understanding of the tools of the political Islam system, with which they influence Iraqi society, and then critique them and develop an alternative with the society in which we live.

In addition to learning to quickly reach people’s hearts and share the awareness we are developing with them in order to assist in a deeper understanding of today’s class struggle and the impact of religious institutions on society.

In this poor neighborhoods in which we live, a huge and historical amount of frustration, sadness, anger and religious-political awareness, which is armed with criminal militias that kill in the name of religion, dominates everyone who opposes them.

These militias have a powerful and not insignificant power that they exercise against us through the oppression of women, freedom, the destruction of the future, corruption, and the strengthening of backward tradition.

We are trying to learn how to develop an alternative society, one that is resilient to positive change and politics on a daily basis starting from home, neighbors and neighborhood, and to discuss the progressive and leftist ideas we believe in with our WAS community.

Which is based on the acceptance of different gender, religious, and intellectual identities, rejection of sectarianism, supporting equality between women and men, separation of religion from politics and different traditions, education.

We try to criticize everything that is sacred and not subject to criticism, spread class awareness, raise awareness of women’s rights, raise awareness of workers’ rights, encourage opposition, resistance and protest, criticize reactionary tribal ideas, criticism of neoliberal politics, and strengthen Iraqi civil society, which is based on freedom and equality between women and men.

We do not claim to have a political alternative, or know how to implement the democratic, progressive and leftist alternatives that are currently available, but what we are doing now is learning, discussion, and developing ideas with our society to gain experience that helps us to understand more deeply the needs of society, the problems of society and helps us to have a deeper understanding of the tools of the Islamic system that affect our society negatively and drag it towards backwardness, rob the rights of workers and women, destroy the future, spread militias and corruption.

We believe that working in poor residential neighborhoods with those in need of change through “politics with society” is much better than the political work carried out by some progressive parties that practice politics in places separated from society, such as public squares, and cultural, intellectual places that do not need that awareness.

This method of political work is old and ineffective and is based on theories that have no grounds for receiving it within society, the reason for this is due to the lack of practice and criticism of theory. Therefore, the Iraqi progressive parties live isolations from society and have a general superficial analysis of today’s problems.

On Women’s Day and for one month, the WAS community launched its political activity “politics with society”, where men and women published and paste more than 3000 posters in a residential neighborhood, starting with our homes, our neighbors and our residential neighborhood, we visited mosques, religious institutions and youth centers In our residential neighborhood in which we live, in the markets and on the walls, we knocked on doors on houses and talked with women in the street and visited workers’ places and talked with them about these demands that we called for:

• We, in the WAS society, demand complete equality between women and men in terms of wages for work, division of labor in the house and raising children.
• Abolishing all customs and traditions that treat women as second-class human beings.
• Abolishing tribal customs and traditions that use women as a commodity to resolve conflicts.
• Honor killings must be considered a crime for which the law will be held accountable.
• We demand an end to all forms of preventing women from leaving the house.
• Implementation of the Domestic Violence Law.
• We demand the equality of the testimony of women in court with testimony of men.
• We demand the equality of the property inherited.

We have encountered some positive and some negative reactions, but the result was significant and beautiful, as one member of the WAS community narrates:

“I went out with my mother to go shopping the next morning, I saw the look of pride and happiness on my mother and sister’s face when they saw these posters on the walls of houses, in the market, as she was not aware of the existence of International Women’s Day, and the presence of youth defending women’s rights in this way. My mother was very happy and asked me why don’t you join the WAS community? They’re doing a great job! Since she didn’t even know I was the one who put up these posters, I told her I’d do it if it pleased you.”

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